After the more than 2,000 attendees retreated for dinner at the end of IBM Vision 2015, day one, IBM’s status as an analytics powerhouse became more than evident. As theCUBE cohost Dave Vellante pointed out, the company bought Cognos in 2007 for nearly $5B, followed by SPSS ($1.2B), Open Pages, Clarity, Algorithmics, and Varicent, among other companies.

IBM’s analytics business revenue is approaching $20 billion and its investments have led to a more broad use of data across its customer base. “With IBM’s vision of using Cloud and Watson Analytics as an overlay layer and delivering the power of analytics to the desktop of the person, I couldn’t help but wonder, is this excel for big data?” asks theCUBE cohost Jeff Frick.

IBM’s plan to inject a “Twitter firehose” into structured data was widely discussed. “I’d like to talk to customers to find out how they are using that data,” said Vellante. “It’s early in the development, but the power of Twitter is undeniable, and I think it’s going to play a bigger role in these businesses.”

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM Vision 2015.